I'm out picking up dinner & I started up the truck and I had no headlights.

Here are my symptoms

I started the car & noticed I had no dash lights. They came on after a second or two & I pulled away. Then realized I had no headlights. Hazards work, turn signals don't. I have hellas wired into my high beams and those work. I'm guessing my turn signal stalk went bad suddenly.

I actually have some tools out with me, so if someone is willing to talk me through troubleshooting or a quick fix I'd be grateful.

 

I'd say the stalk went bad.
Not much roadside you can do with that.
Wiggle the switch hard.
If you take it off you can take it apart and repair it.

 

if the stalk went bad i think the high beams would have come on if the hellas did. i would check the connection at the back of the light bulbs sometimes salt can get in there and corrode the wires and/or connections. might need to get a set of these

 

UPDATE: I ordered a switch. Since I didn’t have much to lose, figured I’d take the old one apart and see if I could fix it. I cleaned it up, lubed it and tested it with a meter and it seemed to be working fine. No luck once I re-installed it. I had my doubts about the switch since it metered out fine. I went home from work and swapped it with the one from my partner’s D2 and the switch worked fine in hers & but hers still didn’t fire mine. It was time to start tracing power…

I had 12v from the battery, through the switch & fuses. All the way up until I got to the connector at the headlight (well, at the ballast anyway. I put in bi-xenons in a while back).

My wiring looked all sorts of messed up in there though. I hadn’t noticed it all when I installed the HIDs. There was an aftermarket relay installed, the Hellas were taking the high beam power out of the back of the socket and there were jumpers and inline fuses in there behind the grille. The Silverstars I had been using for a few years had melted the pockets pretty bad & I should have replaced them when I installed the HIDs, but didn’t. I’m going to run out an pick up some new sockets at lunch time. Saturday I plan to tear out the mess the PO made in there and get everything sorted out the proper way.

 

I tried a bunch of different sockets when mine corroded and fell apart, and the only ones I found that would fit are the one listed above from Amazon. All the rest for some reason would not work with my H4 bulb, they were too small and the bulb would only go in about a quarter of the way. Also, if you leave too much wire on the socket when you reinstall it, the headlight won't fit in right and the socket can be pulled off the bulb.

 

Good to know. I should be okay, I hope. The HID kit I have installed has a pigtail that comes from the bulbs back to the stock sockets. If it doesn't fit, you saved me a ton of time trying out other ones though. Thanks for the tip!

 

J, we should talk again.

 

Sure thing. I'll take any advice you have to offer. I'll PM you my number.

 

Those Silverstars are junk, they melted the harness in my Montero too.
They run to hot and pull to many amps.

 

We should all have someone like J. living next to us, she does all of her own repairs and I have to say she is good.